Todd Phillips options Rolling Stone ‘Dudes’

Todd Phillips’ Green Hat Films banner has optioned feature film rights to Guy Lawson’s Rolling Stone article “Arms and the Dudes” to develop as a potential directing vehicle for Phillips.

Project follows two stoners who became major arms dealers.

Phillips and Green Hat’s Scott Budnick will be producing the project along with Mark Gordon and Bryan Zuriff of the Mark Gordon Co.

Story, which appeared in the March 31 issue of Rolling Stone, chronicled the tale of David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America’s allies in Afghanistan. The two made 85 deliveries of munitions to Afghanistan worth more than $66 million before their arms-dealing careers were cut short when federal agents raided their Miami Beach offices in Aug. 2007, culminating in 71 counts of fraud.

Phillips is coming off “The Hangover Part II,” which has grossed more than $562 million worldwide since opening over Memorial Day weekend. While Phillips hasn’t yet found his next directing vehicle, his next pic as a producer is Nima Nourizadeh’s teen comedy “Project X,” which Budnick exec produced and Warner Bros. will release early next year.